The Vancouver Canucks placed center Aatu Räty on waivers Wednesday, a move that clears space as they prepare to activate forward Filip Chytil from injured reserve, via Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet.
Chytil has been sidelined by a muscular shoulder strain, and with his return approaching, the club needed an open roster spot.
Placing the 23-year-old Räty on waivers accomplishes that; if he clears, he will be assigned to the AHL’s Abbotsford Canucks. There is no guarantee he will pass through unclaimed.
Vancouver’s center depth made the decision more practical than it might appear. Through the first eight games of the season, twelve different forwards have taken faceoffs for the Canucks.
Not all of them are true centers, yet the organization realistically has six players capable of routinely manning the middle, and only four center spots available on any given night. In that environment, the coaching staff concluded the team could manage without Räty in the lineup.
Offensively, Räty’s NHL track record has been modest. Across 103 games he has scored 12 goals and 26 points while averaging roughly 11:31 of ice time.
That production has kept him on the fringes of the rotation rather than locked into a regular bottom-six role. At the same time, he brings a specialized skill many clubs value.
Since the start of the 2024-25 season, he has won 687 of 1,154 faceoffs, a 59.5 percent success rate. Over that same stretch he has begun 54.9 percent of his shifts in the defensive zone, the kind of deployment that signals trust in his ability to handle difficult minutes.
Those attributes, paired with his contract situation, could attract interest from other teams.
Räty is on a league-minimum salary this season under the second year of a two-year, one-way deal signed in June 2025, and the Canucks retain control of him through the 2029-30 season.
Because the cap hit is so low, nearly every team could absorb him without difficulty.
Even clubs that already post solid team faceoff percentages could see him as a low-cost addition who provides surplus value in the circle and on the penalty kill, provided they have an open roster spot.
Whether any club claims him remains to be seen. The Canucks themselves reportedly explored trading Räty before turning to waivers and found no takers, which suggests some teams may prefer to wait and see if he clears.
If he does, Abbotsford will receive a young center with proven faceoff ability and a track record of handling defensive-zone starts.
If he is claimed, Vancouver loses a controllable asset for nothing in exchange for the roster flexibility needed to activate Chytil.
In either case, the move underscores how crowded the Canucks’ middle has become and how specialized skills can still make a player appealing on the waiver wire even when regular ice time has been hard to come by.
